Digital Commons Network^™

Bootstrapped: The Cowboy Nomad From Silicon Valley, Emily Bright

Masters Theses

Silicon Valley is a place that grew out of the legends of the frontier. It has followed in the footsteps of Hollywood Westerns, counterculture frontiersmen, and cyberspace cowboys.

In Silicon Valley, the frontier has been a physical and a metaphorical landscape found between everything existing and everything new-- between ideas of the future shaping technology and technology shaping ideas of the future. This seemingly vast open landscape allows the well-meaning cowboy to use his unique position of privilege to spot and solve systemic technological and social issues.

As these Silicon Valley Cowboys enter the frontier in search of new unclaimed …

Tracking Traces, Songan Kyung

Masters Theses

My art practice in RISD is to reveal violent narratives embedded beneath the surface of digital traces. By taking the role of investigator — crime 71 scene investigator, conspiracy theorist —, I experiment in ways to dismantle and reconstruct the ongoing social phenomena caused by the circulation of harmful digital traces. My practice comprises careful choices of protecting the ones harmed by the malignant digital traces and disclosing the toxicity.

A Hypothetical Debate, Talya Kantro

Masters Theses

A heated argument is taking place, and has been for thousands of years. We deliberate to voice our own opinions, to prove what others have declared, and to validate the past. Judaism – a culture bound by millenia of traditions – follows countless rigorous customs and laws. These traditions are strictly adhered to, and observant members of the faith go through great lengths to show their devotion to their beliefs. Although these laws and customs generally remain uninterrupted over the generations, they can occasionally be challenged by new ideas, new concepts, or new technology. Debates form around these novelties, and …

Balancing The Tangible And Intangible, Shiqi Wu

Masters Theses

I love reading stories, but until now, I had never written my own. Balancing the Tangible & Intangible is organized around my experiences and stories, which are inseparable from my work. Together they constellate a narrative of remembrance. Memories surface, and so do connections, allowing for assurance and conviction during a time of personal flux and global unsettledness. As a choreographer and composer of relationships between the tangible and intangible, I rebuild networks of connections linking memories of my relationship to China, my home country, to my experience of living in the West.

In today's global society, population migration is …

The Reenactment : "Object" As Performance, Yue Jiang

Masters Theses

Throughout history, women have endured many obstacles placed upon them in both the private and public spheres. Women are pressured to achieve an ideal beauty standard and the expectation to fulfill the obligation of traditional domestic roles. As a 23-year old Chinese woman who daily faces these pressures, I intentionally critique them using my body as the site and the pressure as subject. Through acts of performance, using handmade and mass-produced objects consumed daily by women, I highlight the insidious pressures and expectations placed upon women’s bodies. By utilizing the format of photography to document the discomfort of “wearing” or …

Futuristic Communication, Haotian Yang

Masters Theses

In today's world we can no longer separate our lives from technology. It is that fluidity between the human world and the technological world that my work explores. Technological development has brought us great convenience in communication. The existence of programs like Zoom allows people to work and socialize remotely. Instagram, Twitter and other social networks allow people to share their lives anytime and anywhere with a simple snap of a picture and push of a button. The emergence of mobile phones allows people to communicate at any time. Science and technology continue to develop and these developments provide many …

Security Blanket, Danni Xu

Masters Theses

I draw upon the stories of people who have experienced nostalgia to identify a sense of belonging to home. I create familiar objects specific to the stories of diasporic peoples to establish a connection between myself and the viewer or wearer, even when I am not present. As a former hotelier adept at initiating conversation, the goal of this work is to serve as a communication mediator, a way to find mutual interests among people in a proactive way.

This thesis addresses the following questions: Can jewelry build networks of connection across time and space? How does the format of …

Is It Real?, Hana Al-Saadi

Masters Theses

The architecture of Doha, Qatar is defined by skins of glass. When the sun shines upon the layers of glass, it creates a shimmery reflective grid across the surface of the city. These reflections, while visually intriguing, conceal many private realities behind the surface.

As a multidisciplinary artist, I attempt to maneuver in the space between the opacity of the facade and stories that lie behind. Specifically, I use this space to directly expose the contradictions that I encounter here.

Hybrid Garment, Diya Wang

Masters Theses

What is in the overlap between jewelry and clothing? Does the combination of jewelry and apparel create a new, significant,way of seeing art?

Hybrid Garment is a series of work that explores the overlap between fashion and Jewelry. As an artist and designer, my background and training prepared me to dissect and rebuild the relationship between and potential of jewelry and garments. The potential of hybridity serves as a methodology to combine and conflate the two disciplines.The essence of this work carries the idea of inclusivity, it encourages people at all levels to wear them. In addition, anyone wearing it …

Material Encounters: Making Memory Beyond The Mind, Ariel Wills

Masters Theses

Can acts of making carry the memories of our embeddedness within the world? This thesis explores how making things can nurture a sense of kinship that cuts across the organic and inorganic, erasing the distinction between living and dead, material and spiritual. Through handwork such as art-making, sewing, knitting, cooking, woodworking, and beyond, the burden of remembering and of archiving is shared across human and non-human bodies, cultivated through practices of making, and through the materials themselves. By recounting the stories of my family’s experience as Jewish immigrants in the United States, I aim to reveal how their domestic practices …

Mars Is For Fags, Justin Quaid Grubb

Masters Theses

The overarching theme dealt with in my work relates to the Space Age - specifically the predictive futuristic approach to product design and the pop culture that came out of the movement. During this time, technological advancements permeated American culture. Manufactures made the future accessible to everyone and futuristic living became symbolic of innovation, progress, and prosperity. A blueprint for a futurist suburban utopia was forged and the American people were ready to embody the new “American Dream.” Residential Mid-Century Modern architecture emerged as the new site for this dream and along with it came a new way of life. …

Art Can Empower Children And Lead Them To Think Seriously About Significant Critical Issues, Jialu Gao

Masters Theses

This thesis is an investigation of how students can benefit through art and how visual arts educators can engage students in thinking about critical issues that are happening within contemporary society. Raising people’s awareness of the value of art, and especially urging to practice art better in schools’ curriculums are the starting point. This thesis includes looking at selective literature from Elliot Eisner, Charles Fowler, Mika Munakata and other educators and authors. The author also examines select contemporary practices in art education that occur in different settings, for example, in school, in gallery, in museum, and in community. The author …

Creative Learning: Art As A Language For Students With Diverse Learning Styles, Lana Gunn

Masters Theses

We all can experience a challenging time when finding the right word or sentence to describe something. However, for some individuals, this occurs every day with every sentence - so what if art were used as a language for those who have difficulties communicating their thoughts in traditional ways? Many children experience great difficulty when it comes to expressing their emotions and communicating verbally. However, the same children often thrive in the art room. Through art, the author believes that children can discover new ways to understand and explain what they are learning. In this thesis, the author explores what …

Beauty Still Lives Here: Narratives Of Radical Self-Love, Deshun Peoples

Masters Theses

This exhibition is primarily concerned with the act of taking up physical and socio-political space. Through the use of form, design, color, and installation this work places various histories and traditions of both ceramics and resistance in communication with one another. The red, black, and green of Marcus Garvey’s 1920 Pan-African/Black American flag are proudly displayed against a warm, calm, pale green backdrop to highlight the importance of mental health in all endeavors, especially in the emotionally taxing labor of social, political, and economic protest in the battle for humanity, life, civil rights, equity, access, and decision-making power.

Fableware From The Garden Of The Grotesque, Matt Becker

Masters Theses

In biology, a chimaera is created when two zygotes collide at an early stage of development, resulting in a unique creature containing two distinct sets of genes. The name is borrowed from Greek mythology where chimaeras are fire-breathing monsters born with the mixed attributes of lions, snakes, and goats. As creatures of myth, chimaera represent a narrative union of disparate parts; a collision of the fantastic and the mundane.

Clay can be used to explore this dichotomy, utilizing its ability as a mutable canvas to embody a vast range of visual vocabularies while referencing its rich history and placing new …

When Art Education Meets Environmental Issues: The Interconnectedness Of Art And Science, Eunhyung Julie Chung

Masters Theses

In recent years, we have come to understand that the environmental crisis is no longer what we see in books or screens but it is what we are facing now. Along with the public's increasing interest in the environment post-COVID, this thesis explores the role of art in enhancing awareness of critical environmental issues. Through a literature review, the author examines theoretical concepts at the core of the history of art and science in search of ideas about the interconnectedness of science and art. The review explores why an interdisciplinary approach to education is vital to learning about environmental issues …

Building Empathy At The Intersection Of Art, Nature, & Culture: A Field Guide For Art Educators, Jasmine Gutbrod

Masters Theses

This thesis is an offering for those compelled to use art and design learning as a way to strengthen the resiliency of our collective cultures. By integrating intersectional place-based pedagogy into art and design learning, art educators can resist the idea that humans exist on a hierarchy with each other and other species. A deeper understanding of place can build empathy for both nature and culture, and can help educators imagine alternative classroom models that focus on building empathy within a learning environment. The importance of place is examined through a literature review, contemporary artist analysis, case studies, and interviews …

Counting Pebbles Wasn't Even A Class In High School: Seeing Visual Arts Education Through A Process-Forward Lens, Em Xiangning Wang

Masters Theses

This thesis explores process-forward visual arts education in the Greater Providence arts education community. The researcher conducted interviews with arts educators as well as administrators working within organizations guided by a “process-forward” philosophy. Interview transcripts are analyzed to identify any emergent themes of intended and actualized student learning outcomes as well as other commonalities which exist among the interviewed organizations. This investigation found that, within these organizations, multiple, significant forms of student learning outcomes were identified that extended well beyond any particular aesthetic merits of the artistic products created by students

The author calls, in this thesis, for a recalibration …

Sensory Refreshment: Tcm Reconsidered, Ni Tang

Masters Theses

With the rapid development and expansion of our cities and the economic demand placed on residents, city dwellers are under more personal stress than ever. Long commutes, overtime work, irregular rest, unhealthy diets, urban pollution and noise all adversely impact wellbeing. These unhealthy conditions overwhelm the mind and make residents mentally and physically sub-healthy. Sub-health is a state between complete health and sickness, which is especially common in large cities. The sub-health rate in Shanghai and Beijing has reached more than 70%.

Chinese medicine can regulate the human body from a holistic perspective and help solve sub-health problems. Chinese medicine …

Loose Threads / Hilos Sueltos, Estefanía De Ros

Masters Theses

In this body of work, I’ve collaborated with four artisans from my home country, Guatemala: Apolonio Vicente, Vinicio Vicente, Mario Poz and Manuel Otsojay. They all use traditional craft methods with natural materials: wicker, wool, and cotton. I interweave, overlap, and knot mementos from my childhood with current ideas and dialogues that contain loose threads to the work. All of the layers merge in fluid forms with texture and movement. The curtains let light in, the rug sets warmth, and the “cayuco” invites you to slow down.

I aim to push back against the devaluing of craft traditions, especially in …

I Just Can't Get You Out Of My Head : Frenetic Vortex, Animal As Image - Field Notes (1989-2021), Steffanie A. Padilla

Masters Theses

This essay is an attempt to describe a hypnosis induced by media through the accumulation of images in everyday life starting the day I was born. Raised by television and the internet, I go through a chronological timeline of my life selecting banal memories to showcase how violence to animals became neutralized/rendered invisible. The work is primarily concerned with mental health while focused on the youth, ecological destruction, and how sensory overload keeps us from knowing ourselves. The motivation of this paper is to better understand how our environment shapes our reality by using a psychological, media theory, and cognitive …

Living · Sharing · Connecting : Rebirth Of Longchang Apartments Heritage Community, Linhong Jiang

Masters Theses

The Longchang Apartments, which the British designed during the Shanghai Concession Period, is considered a building of great historical importance. However, the disconnected relationship between this historic building and the ever-developing modern society surrounding it becomes more and more evident over time. The backward living conditions of residents and management fail to meet contemporary needs, which intensifies various conflicts between different user groups within the historic site.

This thesis proposes a different way of living in high density within historic structures and explores a new program focusing on user groups’ behavior and interaction to activate the site. The adaptive reuse …

Remember Me: How We Can Modify The Home For People With Dementia, Wenjin Wang

Masters Theses

More than 50 million people live with dementia worldwide. For reasons of familiarity, affordability, and psychological comfort, the home is uniquely preferred by people with dementia (PwD) and their caregivers for aging in place. Ample studies show that built environmental features (e.g., furnishing, lighting, layout) influence the daily lives of PwD. These features can be modified easily and with fewer disruptions to daily life at home. However, most PwD and their caregivers usually have little knowledge of what can be achieved through simple interventions to environmental features.

There is a great need for an exhibition to explain the dementia-friendly home …

Bridging The Gap Between Secondary Writing Instruction And Post-Secondary Writing Needs, Elexcia S. Washington

Masters Theses

Secondary students across the United States often graduate without the prerequisite writing skills needed for post-secondary education and employment success. This thesis examines the history of U.S. writing instruction and the influential figures that have influenced writing instruction across secondary school classrooms. It also explores the effects of teacher education and legislation like the Elementary and Secondary Education and No Child Left Behind acts on writing outcomes. This thesis also identifies the most effective evidence-based writing interventions before concluding with recommendations and a teacher's guide.

The Prevalence Of Grammar In Virginia Higher Education, Caroline Nicatie Stimpson

Masters Theses

This thesis describes why the prescriptive grammar model should be implemented in public education rather than the descriptive grammar model. For the purposes of this paper, prescriptive grammar refers to how words ought to be used, while descriptive grammar refers to how words are used by native speakers in natural settings. The central issue I address in this thesis is how prescriptive grammar enables students to read and write properly, heightens their linguistic knowledge, improves their ability to express themselves, and teaches them useful skills for future educational and employment opportunities. Additionally, it outlines the flaws inherent in the descriptive …

The Retrieval Of Memory: Holding Time In The Shanghai Gasometers, Liman Wei

Masters Theses

Shanghai was primarily an industrial city from the 19th century to the 20th century. By serving as a carrier of time, the past industrial architecture in Shanghai is invested with the collective memory of its past inhabitants. Now that Shanghai has entered the post-industrial period, according to the Shanghai 2035 Urban Plan, the Yangshupu Industrial Zone will be transformed into a new Central Activity Zone. As a result of this plan, old residential neighborhoods nearby will be demolished and replaced by new high-rise residential buildings. The relationship between old residential areas and industrial buildings will be uprooted. Memories of industry …

Architecture Of Aging Care: A Field Through Architectural Innovation, Eve Huining Guo

Masters Theses

A thesis is original.

A thesis for me is the process of finding my hidden voice toward society and making it stands in my own language. Not saying the first or second language I speak, but the unique language that I have created after years of learning and experiences in both the Architecture field and across the other disciplines. A thesis then introduces it to the world.

A thesis is living in the present, it reveals the current stage of my perception of big concerns towards the world-scale phenomenon and my focus towards how it relates to the individuals like …

Ctrl Shift, Kit Son Lee

Masters Theses

CTRL SHIFT makes a case for design under contemporary computation. The abstractions of reading, writing, metaphors, mythology, code, cryptography, interfaces, and other such symbolic languages are leveraged as tools for understanding. Alternative modes of knowledge become access points through which users can subvert the control structures of software. By challenging the singular expertise of programmers, the work presented within advocates for the examination of internalized beliefs, the redistribution of networked power, and the collective sabotage of computational authority.

Going Back, Zhiyi Hilary He

Masters Theses

The acceleration of social urbanization and education universalization in the past 30 years of China has promoted the popularization of mandarin among the public. Meanwhile, the dialect, as a unique regional language, is gradually dying away. In the city where I grew up, Taizhou, only the elders are likely to speak Taizhou dialect frequently in their life, while others prefer to use mandarin rather than dialect. The truth is the usage rate of dialect has gradually decreased from generation to generation. The primary goal of this thesis is to provide an opportunity for the public to “dialogue with the past” …

Beacon Public Library: Expanding Radical Civic Care For An Uncertain Future, Katrina Machado

Masters Theses

Stressors like climate change will put strain on our communities, making them more vulnerable. I am asserting and expanding the role of the public library as a civic space for radical care and community resilience. This work explores the ways in which the public library, as an existing institution, could adapt to the needs of its changing environment and community. Interventions are visualized by a librarian’s jumpsuit and library apron, an adapted library book cart, public signage, and a re-imagined library card.

I imagine a public library that pushes the bounds of its physical building and actively and compassionately serves …